Samsung Pay Beta Now Available in Malaysia for MayBank Users

Last year, Samsung introduced the Samsung Pay mobile payment service in its home country, South Korea. A month after launching its service in Korea, the company also introduced the Samsung Pay in the U.S. Just like the Apple Pay; the Samsung Pay is exclusive to their own ecosystem of devices. Apple recently introduced the Apple Pay on their new 2016 Macbook Pro laptops. In 2016, Samsung launched its Samsung Pay services in few more nations including China, Australia, Spain, Brazil, Russia, and Canada. Now, the company is testing its mobile payment service in Malaysia, and as of now, it is available only for Maybank users.

Once the company officially launches it in Malaysia, we can expect it support other banks as well. The Android-powered Samsung smartphones like Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy A5 (2016), Galaxy A7 (2016), Galaxy S7, and Galaxy S7 Edge will be supporting Samsung pay. Even though the Tizen-powered Gear S2 and Gear S3 smartwatches support Samsung Pay, they are not mentioned in the list of supporting devices. To test out the Samsung Pay in Malaysia, the user needs to register with their Maybank card and supporting Samsung device by December 16th. Soon Samsung pay will also be made available in UK, Turkey, Taiwan, and Poland.

For the Maybank card users without Samsung devices, the company is also offering an exclusive 15% discount on the Black and Gold color variants of Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge smartphone. It is available for MYR 2,634.15 after the 15% discount on the retail price of MYR 3099.00. One advantage Samsung Pay has over the Android Pay and Apple Pay is that it supports payment even with MST enable terminals, whereas the other mobile payment systems support only NFC-enabled terminals. Apart from the very few big outlets, not many other shops will have the latest NFC-enabled terminals. Even the rumored LG Pay mobile payment technology is said to work with both MST and NFC technologies.

LG might introduce this new feature with the upcoming LG G6 smartphone which will be unveiled at the upcoming MWC 2017. It also supports the LG smartwatches that are rumored to launch in four different variants. The company also trademarked the ‘LG Watch Pay’ in Europe which unofficially confirms the presence of mobile payment feature on the smartwatches. While the NFC-based mobile payment is more secure than any other kind of transaction, the MST based transactions which create a magnetic field from the coil within device contains the actual payment information and as safe as out daily card based transactions.

Coming to the India, there is no exact information about the availability of these services. While the technology advancements are taking place at least in the metro cities, the government regulation has to be changed to bring in the Samsung Pay kind of services to India. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook during his recent trip to India also said to be considering in making the Apple Pay services available soon to the India users. Stay tuned on Phoneradar for more details!